The Offal Has Landed

Ok so I’d bought some lambs fry. I wish I hadn’t. I had gone to the mad butchers, it seems to be the kind of place where people who buy offal shop and I’m hoping for the freshest variety meats available so high stock turnover is a distinct advantage. I did go in to look for Kidneys – there are far more Kidney dishes in the offal category than any other organs, unfortunately however the kidneys came in trays of 8. There was no way I was going to cook 8 kidneys over a weekend and for some reason I feel offal, a bit like fish, shouldn’t be frozen.

The lambs fry however was in a nice small serve. $1.87 of pure torture.

I’m sure the mental workout and anticipation made it far worse than it needed to be. I had to cut it up – this was the first time I had dealt with liver. It was surprisingly tough to cut. Sort of fibery like old stewing steak. It was also full of little pipey bits. I’m not a fan of pipes – I forgo Mussels and many other shellfish for just that reason. I tried to cut it into small slices with relatively few pipes, I planned on justifying to myself that I had done ok based on the number of pieces consumed so they might as well be as small as possible.

I soaked the slivers in cold water. The blood seeped out and formed a red layer in the bottom of the bowl. I attempted to procrastinate.

I coated the drained slivers in seasoned flour. Once coated they actually looked quite tasty, unfortunately I then cooked them which undid all my good work. They smelt. They smelt like liver. They smelt bad.

Of course I had built this up to a stage where I was never going to enjoy it. Why had I done this? I don’t know. When you think about the actual process of eating it makes little sense why we can be physically repulsed by food. It’s food, there is nothing wrong with it, all you have to do it put it in your mouth, chew and swallow. How hard can it be? Unfortunately food seems to be a lot more emotional than logical. And liver is gross.

Ok so I fried it, I then added water and allowed it to thicken and form a gravy. Liver gravy. And I thought gravy was my friend. Thank goodness there are no offal related custard dishes or I could feel completely abandoned. I served it up with bacon – like the sweets you get after the medicine.

So how was it. You can hardly expect me to say it as good after all of the build up. It was more manageable in cooked form than in raw though. Texture wise it was a lot tougher than I expected and slightly grainy. Flavour wise it everything I -sort of almost oddly sweet, or possibly just not quite salty enough, and intensely livery.

I didn’t expose the husband to my inner turmoil over the lambs fry and bacon. I told him what it was, I handed over the plate, he covered it in HP sauce and ate the lot. I managed a piece.